Fallout (20th century)

In September 1952 republican nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower would suffer a series of major heart attacks just mere moths before the general election, although he survived this ordeal he wasn't in well enough health to continue running and subsequently dropped out of the race. This was quite the inconvenience for the GOP, who had been banking on Eisenhower's immense popularity and were now forced to appoint his unpopular runner up, Robert A Taft, as the republican nominee. As many expected Taft flopped and ended up losing the general election to the almost equally unpopular democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson, who's unpopularity was made immediately worse when he, in a misguided attempted to put his noninterventionist policies into practice, pulled US-forces from the Korean peninsula and negotiated a conditional surrender with North Korea and Red China. Just over a year later the South Korean state predictably collapsed after a Soviet-DPRK backed coup overthrew Syngman Rhee's government and installed a revolutionary interm government that quickly submitted to northern occupation and eventual annexation.

The perceived foreign policy blunder on the Korean Peninsula combined with the already apparent unpopularity caused a deep resentment against their president within the American people, with many groups going as far as to call for secession. When the 1956 election came around it's no surprise that Richard Nixon won in one of the largest landslide victorious the country had ever seen, breaking a chain of democrat victories stretching back to 1932. Nixon would prove to be one of the more popular American presidents of the 20th century, he appeased the hardline physical-conservatives that had become vocal during the Adlai administration by effectively abolishing the lingering FDR-era New Deal programmes, he would also support Britain, Israel, and France during the Suez Canal Crisis, contributing to the tri-alliance's conditional victory in the conflict, and would make enormous efforts to keep the newly established French Fifth Republic firmly in the US-NATO sphere of influence. Nixon would also lay the foundations for human space exploration when he established the United States Space Administration (USSA), which would then go on to put the first human into outer space with the 1961 flight of captain Carl Bell.

In the waning years of Nixon's second term the United States would be drawn into war in South East Asia when the war between North and South Vietnam, which had been slowly escalating since 1958, began to seriously threaten US-aligned South Vietnam. Nixon, seeing the situation as an analogue of the Korean War, declared the US to be once again at war and vowed to "Do it right this time." Just over a year after the beginning of the American involvement in the conflict Nixon's second term would expire and the 1964 general election would be held. Youthful democratic candidate John F. Kennedy would win the election by a large margin thanks to the now voting aged baby boom generation, Kennedy would inherit the Vietnam War and would prove himself to be a capable war time leader, establishing a defined front and leading an extensive bombing campaign against the north. Kennedy was also notable for his domestic policies, paving the way for the civil rights movement, abolishing the draft, and continuing the space race against the Soviet Union[1]. Not all were pleased by Kennedy's policies however, the separatist movements from the Adlai era were once again becoming prominent in the face of what they called "the federal government trampling state's rights", in order the appease this potential threat the Kennedy administration cooked up the Commonwealth Act, a proposal that would divide the USA into thirteen semi-autonomous commonwealths that would exist in between the federal and state government, democrats and republicans eventually agreed on the plan and it was passed in 1969, a year after the Vietnam War ended with the surrender and pacification of North Vietnam.

As the sixties ended and the world entered a new decade things would look radically different from OTL 1970's. One of the most noticeable discrepancies was perhaps cultural, the cultural climate of the US in 1970 was practically the exact same as it had been 15 or even 20 years prior, this was likely due to the cultural impact of the Kennedy administration, which had shaped the baby boomers as progressive reformists who were also more then happy to bear the torch of their predecessors and perpetuate post-WWII American ideals and culture. The early 1970's began with a period of thawed tension between the western and eastern worlds, as diplomacy opened up with former communist enemies the US began to hatch plans of taking advantage of the Sino-Soviet split and building relations with the People's Republic of China, these plans were cut tragically short however when Chairman Mao's death due to a series of strokes in 1971 would allow the notorious Gang of Four, lead by Mao's former wife Jiang Qing, to perform a coup and take control of the country.

Once in power the new Chinese leadership would begin a campaign of extensive industrialization, forsaking Mao's original ideology of "agrarian socialism" in favour of an economic system reminiscent of the 1930's-era USSR. The PRC would come to mantle Stalin's Soviet Union in more ways then economic however, after the "People's Revolution" (an extension of the Cultural Revolution), was declared an immense network of gulags would come to dot the landscape of the Chinese western frontier, and countless hundreds of nuclear weapons would join the Chinese arsenal. China's actions would further alienate both the US and USSR as both states sanctioned and condemned the nation, this would have the unintended effect of bringing both countries closer together against a common enemy, and by 1974 the Treaty of Moscow would be signed between the two states during a historic presidential visit to Russia. The Moscow Treaty established a thirty-year armistice between the USA and USSR as well as a nine-year economic plan that would liberalize the Soviet economy and open it up to western investment, two years after the signing of the treaty the Warsaw Pact would dissolve in a series of unorthodox elections and peaceful (for the most part) revolutions, the Soviet Union, seeing the pact as obsolete and ultimately an obstacle in the way of their new alliance with the west, simply allowed it to peacefully dissolve.

The world would awake from the detente when Sino-Soviet tensions came to a head in 1979 over Mongolia, Mongolia, who's population was still genuinely in support of communism, felt betrayed by the Soviet Union, and as such in early 1979 thousands of workers, students, and teachers took to the streets and protested the Treaty of Moscow. After months of protesting federal buildings were seized and a revolution was declared, the Mongolian government responded to this by sending in the army which had the effect of escalating the conflict ten-fold when China sent in the PLA to "protect the protesters". A half-civil-war-half-invasion ensued and by 1983 the process of direct annexation had begun, with China deflecting the international condemnation it received by claiming the country joined at the will of it's own people.

In late 1984, after the Mongolia crisis had subsided somewhat, European Economic Community, which by now had expanded to the Baltic States[2], would be restructured into the Greater European Economic Commonwealth, later renamed simply the European Commonwealth, essentially functioning as an almost identical analogue of OTL's EU, albeit it was culturally much more conservative and nationalistic. The late 1980's saw the Arabic Union, which had come about through the 1975 merging of OPEC and the Arab League, formally federalize after the Ba'ath Party completely took over it's leadership in 1987, the newly formed superstate would align it's self with China and act as the Ying to the EC's Yang. As the world entered the 1990's China would massively expand it's sphere of influence, first gaining allies in South America after Peru fell to a Maoist insurgency and Nicaragua and Honduras were taken over by an analogue of the Sandinistas, and later carving up South East Asia into satellite states after the resumption of the Vietnam War (1992-1998), an event that would put Australia on edge and create a new, more humid, Iron Curtain.



[1] in this timeline the Soviet Union was much further behind on their space program in the 1950's, allowing the USA to pass all the milestones before them, in the late 1960's the moon landings played out just as they did in OTL but with different astronauts and different vehicle and mission names.

[2] The Baltic States achieved independence from the Soviet Union after a series of referendums were held in 1980-1983 which also saw Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Chechnya gain independence. Kaliningrad later voted for independence in 2036 and became an independent nation before collapsing and being occupied by Polish insurgents in the 2060's.

*edit* I forgot to mention the state of Cuba ITTL, basically the 1959 revolution is much more disorganized and gets put down when Nixon commits to deploying troops on the island, the result was Fidel and Che fleeing to the USSR and Batista remaing in power until his death in 1970 despite growing US condemnation. In 1973 the interm military junta abdicated after the threat of sanctions and democracy was restored. By the 21st century Cuba and Puerto Rico are flirting with the idea of becoming the US's first "semi-autonomous states".